In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

is lovely.
She mewls
and purrs
and sleeps
and eats
and *****
like there is nothing wrong with it.

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over ***** or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: "That's me."

maybe if we laced our fingers together and made wings out of our mistakes,
we could fly off together forgetting where we came from

or maybe
if we spoke even
allowing our words to curl around our naive bodies
of uncertainty and happiness
we could go somewhere.

or maybe if time allowed us
we could understand an ounce of how far our souls reached into the universe
eternally

or maybe if we both were ready
or maybe if i was ready
and you tried on more time
(you didn't have to stop after fifty)

or maybe
there's a reason we didn't work out
maybe
it was never a maybe
but a clear
defined
nahhhhhh.

why do u follow me
why
i do not write poetry
*******

Sleep, sleep, my beloved,
without worry, without fear,
although my soul does not sleep,
although I do not rest.

Sleep, sleep, and in the night
may your whispers be softer
than a leaf of grass,
or the silken fleece of lambs.

May my flesh slumber in you,
my worry, my trembling.
In you, may my eyes close
and my heart sleep.

I know we haven’t talked in a while. Not since
I recognized the decisive crack of your voice
like a crinkling plastic gum wrapper
and I let the phone fall. That was
five years ago and I don’t know where you are now.
But I’m writing this
because I can’t stop writing
about you and your shapes and your smells and you
and white powder and you and religion
and religious books neatly stacked and you and every piece of you
and a rickety black tram bursting forth in the darkness and you
and pockets of light that sometimes shine through in cocoons or at elegant dinners
and you and aftershave and blood and muddy river water and you
and flowers in porcelain vases and couches encased in plastic and you
and I am endlessly backtracking to silent violations
and black midnights riddled with hunger and confusion and
I don’t know maybe some other time
and it’s like our hands and wrists are bound together as though bandaged
and the whites of my eyes are permanently reddened by an
invisible fire’s breath
or the glow of your face
and even now everything won’t stop shaking
and I just stare
at my hands
and tiles
and patterns in carpets
and I keep staring and staring forever
only at things that won’t move away from me
like inanimate objects but
I’ll leave you here
with a letter I’ll never mail
because I’m no longer the quivering little girl
beneath you
and I’ll get ****** up again and think
this is freedom, isn’t it?
churning sweetness and liberality into my
empty stomach?
but then why does my mouth still
taste like metal?

Grow the growth
Get your act together
Take the oath
Don't avoid bad weather
Take your lumps
Let out your cats
Squeeze your lemons
Just live like that

At two this midnight the little dark one
Became a poem, her all-knowing smile
The first stanza and her baby bird- glance
Became the next one as she pranced there
On the floor up and down like pendulum
Swinging in the free air, a full fall of force,
A pout of sarcasm from tiny baby lips.

I at midnight wanted to round it off
With a cool third stanza, of epigram
A last line well said, to the deep night.
But she wouldn’t let me, the little one
That squirmed in my hands like a worm
Full of bones that pushed against mine
In my withered palms and finger bones.
It is life which pushed against my death.
As the night creeps I once again go into
My epigrammatic mode of the old poet
With the bally irony thing barely broached.


The curl on my lips that briefly occurred
Vanished without trace in my confusion
As my eye followed her moving in circles.
I thought I had seen the curl on her lips.